


i'll be at your door tonight

by phae



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Clint and Phil are not like normal couples, Developing Relationship, M/M, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-11 18:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phae/pseuds/phae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Clint moves stuff into Phil’s apartment while he is away, and the one time Phil gives him implicit permission to do as he pleases.</p><p>EDIT: Bonus scene added as Chapter 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Phillip Phillips' _Gone, Gone, Gone _. I don't know why, but it has joined the Phlint soundtrack in my head.__

Phil comes back from a classified op in a redacted location to find an assortment of spotless pots and pans filling his formerly empty bottom cabinets. Phil pulls out his cell and calls Barton.

He doesn’t bother asking how Barton knows where he lives or how he got around the advanced security system and the low-tech traps Phil set up at all the key access points. Rather, he cuts straight to the chase and inquires about the sudden appearance of cookware in his kitchen.

Phil is informed that the on-base quarters at SHIELD don’t include kitchenettes and learns that Barton prefers cooking for himself to the cafeteria’s mystery offerings when he has the time to manage it. Phil opens his fridge to take his usual disappointing inventory of its contents while Barton rambles on about the horrors of SHIELD-issued meatloaf.

Where Phil is expecting to find an optimistic two out of six beers and possibly some chunky expired milk, he finds instead fresh vegetables wrapped in grocery produce bags, a carton of eggs, and a gallon of 2%. Phil waits for Barton to wrap up his rant, then he wrangles a promise for biweekly home-cooked meals and a fridge stocked with groceries and leftovers out of Barton. He leaves it at that.

*

Three months later, Phil is discharged from medical after incurring a few minor injuries while on business overseas, and he heads back to his apartment. He falls back into the cushions of his couch with a relieved sigh, grabs the TV remote to catch up on _Supernanny,_ and discovers _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_ has joined his DVR queue.

Phil’s eyes shift over to the shelves of the entertainment center housing his movie collection to find _The Goonies_ and _The Princess Bride_ have joined the ranks of _Men in Black_ and his James Bond collection. They have been correctly filed by genre and then alphabetically by title.

Barton later claims that his requisition requests for a personal television were denied multiple times and that the flat screen in the common rec room is rarely free. Phil finds no paper trail for these supposed requisition forms. Sitwell was aghast to learn that Phil had somehow never seen _The Princess Bride_ , however; so Phil figures this will give him an excuse to finally watch it.

Shortly after the Dread Pirate Roberts begins to climb a cliff face, a man in raggedy jeans and a hoodie vaults over Phil’s couch and snatches a bag of HoHos from his stash on the coffee table. Phil allows it, but he throws empty packages at Barton’s head every time he mutters a line three seconds before the character on screen says it.

*

Phil spends two months on a deep undercover op and is ordered to take a week off upon his return. He decides to use the forced downtime to do some Spring cleaning because the idea of inactivity for an entire week nearly makes his eye twitch.

While he’s switching a load of laundry over from the washer to the dryer, he finds a soggy foam dart mixed in with his tees and sweatpants. He’s cleaning out all the freezer burnt foods from the refrigerator when he reaches into the back right corner and pulls out a frosted manual Nerf gun. Phil makes a quick trip to the store for fresh cleaning supplies and discovers a small Nerf pistol shoved between the center console and the creamy leather of Lola’s passenger seat.

Barton provides no excuses for these incidents when Phil asks; he simply smirks before ducking around a corner to disappear into SHIELD’s ventilation system.

It isn’t until Phil is snapped awake by his gut-instincts telling him that something’s flying towards his face, and his hand snatches a Velcro-tipped arrow out of the air, that he visits the nearest toy store and invests in a battery-powered gun and sufficient suction-cup ammo. The first time he actually catches Barton crashing on his couch, he wakes him with a barrage of harmless but annoying darts. He throws an actual dart at Barton’s ass for his audacity at jimmying Lola’s locks, but Barton easily flicks it and redirects it into the wall.

Nevertheless, when Phil gets around to rearranging the living room furniture after he’s cleaned under all of it, he takes a soft fleece throw out of the hall closet and leaves it folded over the back of the couch.

*

The next three weeks find Phil in D.C. playing the role of a government stooge while he tails a foreign dignitary who proves to be useless to SHIELD’s interests as well as completely incompetent. Once he’s home, Phil passes out as soon as he’s hung up his suit and shucked on a pair of pajama bottoms. The next morning he trudges out in search of coffee and pulls up short when he comes face-to-leaf with a bird’s nest fern sitting on the counter of the kitchen island.

With a sigh, Phil continues on to his state-of-the-art brewer to set it to warming up. He pulls down a coffee mug—bedecked in a Batman logo and most certainly not one of his—from the cabinet and fills it with water from the sink that he slowly pours into the fern’s pot.

Barton later informs him that his room is tragically devoid of windows, and thereby natural sunlight, without Phil prompting him when he drops off his latest mission report two days late. Phil levels his blandest stare at Barton and tells him pointblank that he’s not watering it or turning it towards light as needed.

A cactus pops up overnight nestled amongst his action figures on top of the bookshelf by the window. There is a post-it speared on its short spikes that reads: _Minimal care required, as requested._

A purple hens and chicks becomes the centerpiece of his coffee table. An arrowhead vine takes up residence in the corner next to the entertainment center. A philodendron stares him down from his bedside table one morning, having displaced his alarm clock.

Phil stops by a shop with a gardening section on his way into work and purchases a watering can. He leaves it just inside the vent access above his office and sets about working through the mounds of paperwork that never seem to diminish.

The next morning Phil blinks awake and frowns to hear low humming coming from his living room. Barton, presumably watering the plants, raises his voice as he smoothly belts out, “ _I got sunshine, on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outside, I got the month of May_.” Phil allows himself to smile, out of sight of prying eyes, and relaxes back against his pillow as he listens.

*

Phil feels like a zombie dragging a half-severed limb along after being awake for over 52 hours on a shitstorm of an op, but he bypasses his bed and forces himself into the shower to wash away the blood and grime first.

He reaches for his shampoo blindly, pops open the cap and squeezes out a dollop into his hand. As he works it into a lather and begins massaging it into his scalp, the scent of the shampoo fills the shower stall. Phil pauses, fingers scrunched into his hair, as he realizes that the smell is all wrong; it isn’t the waft of a fake ocean breeze surrounding him, but instead that of a spice garden.

Phil squints his eyes open and looks over the bottles lined up on the recessed shower shelf. Old Spice body wash – his. Suave 2-in-1 – his. American Crew shampoo – not his.

Phil sleeps for a good nine hours before he heads back to his office to find Barton. He tells the air vent in his office that he highly doubts the on-base quarters are lacking showers. The vent responds that they do in fact come equipped with showers and a good deal of piping hot water, but that the water pressure is complete shit. It then approvingly tells him that he smells freshly expensive today.

Phil avoids Barton for the rest of the day, but he does clear out half of the medicine cabinet when he gets home.

*

That weekend Phil goes shopping. In addition to getting the ingredients for his favorite four-cheese lasagna, Phil picks up a new pillow and pillowcase, as well as a purple Twilight Sparkle toothbrush.

Phil texts Barton that he expects the lasagna to be ready for dinner. He places the toothbrush in the tumbler next to his own. He moves his own pillow, and the small Nerf gun stashed under it, from the middle of the queen-size bed and places the new pillow next to it.

After dinner, he tells Barton he’s turning in early and heads to bed, deliberately scooting over to the far side and falling asleep on his side. In the morning he wakes up facing the philodendron and with a tan, well-muscled arm wrapped snug around his waist. Soft breaths rustle the hairs at the back of his neck. Phil smiles as he turns his head into the pillow that smells of Clint’s shampoo and goes back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and the plants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bonus scene I wrote in response to a comment left by Amarin_Rose about the cactus not fitting in with the other themed plants that Clint leaves around Phil's apartment, now posted as it's very own chapter. Used it as an excuse to slip in both Budapest and an off-topic reference to the pineapple-coconut scones.

The first cactus is a Robin Tree.

Six weeks after Clint’s change-of-address forms are filed with HR, Fury assigns Phil to Budapest. Things do not go as expected, and Fury approves Phil’s request to dispatch Barton and Romanoff to Phil’s scrambled location. By the time they’ve wrapped everything up and gotten a begrudging all-clear from medical, it’s been nearly a month since Phil and Clint were last in their apartment.

The plants have not only withered and died, they have left behind vengeful souls hell-bent on haunting them, or so Clint claims. After a week of careful care, Phil manages to resuscitate the Robin Tree, though it’s never quite the same.

From them on, only cacti appear sporadically in Phil’s life. A Merry Widow takes the fern’s former post on the kitchen island. Clint calls it Tasha and sings it Russian lullabies. A pineapple cactus becomes the living room’s new centerpiece and Clint dubs it Coconut. Phil doesn’t ask.

The coup de grâce, though, is the Nichol’s Prickly Pear inhabiting Phil’s office upon his return from New Mexico. The SHIELD ID badge taped to the t-stake jutting from the dirt in the small pot proclaims it to be Director Nick Fury. Phil goes out and buys a cheap costume eye-patch for it. When Nick next visits his office, Phil blames it on Clint. The vent offers no protests.


End file.
